Our Story

When our baby developed severe eczema, my husband and I went about solving it - not just identifying triggers, but understanding the cause and solving the problem.

I published our experience in newsletters, then on a web site - www.solveeczema.org - to help other families.

In the years since, parents all over the world have used the web site information to eliminate their children's severe eczema when nothing else worked.  I have even been thanked by doctors who used the information to help their own families.

The Impact

Severe childhood eczema is a worsening global problem. In some parts of the world, eczema rates in children now exceed 30% and continue to climb, with no acknowledged cure.  Asthma and allergies often accompany eczema. Eczema can cause unrelenting itching, pain, chronic sleep deprivation, skin infections, social problems from poor appearance, behavioral effects, even impaired social development. When a child has this miserable disease, a whole family suffers.

Around the world, people are spending billions of dollars in an often vain search for answers and relief.  I believe - with novel interpretation - the bits and pieces of the answer for the majority of children with eczema can be found in existing medical literature and a prospective study of the solution already helping parents in Solveeczema.org can bring those pieces together.

What We Need & What You Get

I am looking for personal sponsorship so I can afford to focus full-time on making a medical study a reality, writing a book and starting a related social business.

I have set a goal of $5,000, essentially a writer's grant so I can put out a self-published book about the solution.  

With more, I could do more:

Over $10,000 - I could finish a book and pay a web designer to make needed improvements to Solveeczema.org that are beyond my ability

Over $36,000 - Support me for a year, to do the above, and allow me to pay for the time of a medical partner to develop a protocol and budget for a medical study so I can get funding for a medical study.  

     While unlikely at this stage of the campaign, any higher level of support would go directly to making medical study progress (Over $250,000 would fund a whole study, start to finish).

More detail:

What I'd like to do (depending on level of support):

*Research Protocol:  Develop, with a medical partner, a specific research protocol and budget for a prospective medical study.  

*Medical Study:  Fund a prospective medical study of the solution in Solveeczema.org for a group of atopic families, measuring quality of life, eczema severity, other allergy and asthma, and skin barrier function for an infant, a sibling, and at least one atopic parent in each family, plus the same for atopic control families who do not implement the solution.  Test period will cover two months prior to implementing the solution, during implementation, and at least six months after.  If indicated and where feasible, solution will be withdrawn for 2 or more families and eczema severity and skin barrier function changes monitored.  This campaign can't fund such a study (unless donations go into six figures, in which case the extra money will go to fund the study itself), but will allow me to focus on getting funding.

*Revise and Improve Website:  Fund professional web design to update and improve the information and add community capability.

*Write book incorporating years of blog entries and new knowledge to streamlined information from the Solveeczema.org site.

*Start Social Business:  To grow funds for research of this and other unsolved problems, where I believe an answer already exists in the medical literature and empirical problem solving is needed rather than new science.  Business opportunities related to solutions would help fund non-profit research on other solutions.

Thank You's for your gracious contribution

Pledge levels and Thank You gifts:

All gifts of $1 or more - Thank you acknowledgement on new page of Solveeczema.org

$50 - Two soap foam pumps, large or small (your choice), the best I have ever found.

$100 - Two soap foam pumps, and your choice of 3 fine bar soaps from a list of my favorites

$250 - Signed copy of my book, Problem-solving Your Child's Eczema, when finished, plus two soap foam pumps, and choice of 3 fine bar soaps from my list

$500 -  Personal consultation by telephone and email for those wanting individual input while implementing Solveeczema.org (up to 2 hours).  (Note:  I cannot give medical advice.) 

$1,000 - Kit of handpicked household and personal care products meeting the criteria of Solveeczema.org + personal consultation (as below) + signed book + thank you in acknowledgements of book 

Other Ways You Can Help

Parents tell me they couldn't parent normally before they implemented the solution on Solveeczema.org, or that their children never lived a day without pain or slept through a single night because of the intense itching, or that they suffered life-threatening infections, or were ostracized by other children and adults.  And they tell me what a difference it makes to really, truly see and understand where the previously random-seeming outbreaks come from and how to prevent or eliminate them, to have control over what had once controlled them.  Many parents have described how asthma was ameliorated or eliminated along with the eczema, as the underlying basis would predict, and which also deserves further study.

Any level of support will help me take this forward to a degree that will help more people.  My ultimate goal is ambitious but doable:  to ensure no child has to live with eczema unnecessarily, and to show new ways to solve seemingly intractable medical problems.  

*Thank you to Jill Schoff, for sharing the wonderful photo above.  Jill wrote her book Green Up Your Cleanup after using Solveeczema.org for her baby.

I am probably obliged to tell you that donations are not tax-deductible.  If you know of any good organizations that might be appropriate for fiscal sponsorship, please let me know!